It's pitch black, and your teeth are chattering so loudly that you barely even notice the three simultaneous heart attacks you're having as you creep through the tall grasses of an open field. Suddenly, the bushes behind you rustle. You jerk your head so quickly that your body nearly doesn't get the chance to follow, as the hulking, foreboding figure of a baby bunny hops out from the bush. Phew. Heart attack number four averted. For now. You wipe the sweat from your brow – which, at this particular moment, is the world's most accurate model of what would happen if the polar ice caps actually melted – and continue onwards.

For about two feet. That's when you see it. Yep, there it is – right in front of you. Oh sweet mother of mercy. No, no – not the sprinting, groaning gray guy who's licking his unhinged chops and eying your neck. I'm talking about the thing behind him. That's right: a thermos full of coffee! Finally! Awesome! Sorry Mr. terrifying zombie man; just a second. You see, I need that coffee for an achievement.

The game in question? Alan Wake, a game quite capable of keeping you on the edge of your seat right up until the moment it spills hot coffee all over your lap. And it's certainly not alone. For the longest time, triple-A games polished their graphics and tweaked their ambient bunny-in-a-bush sounds in pursuit of a holy grail known simply as “immersion.” Gamers wanted it; game developers wanted it – for everything around the player to just melt away. To be utterly, hopelessly, and completely lost in the game world, without even the thinnest bread crumb trail back to reality. These days, though, immersion is about as prized as an airplane seat surrounded by screaming babies with no nearby emergency exit to fling yourself from. Or at least, it certainly seems that way.

July 27, 2010. Hordes upon throngs upon crowds upon oodles upon gobs of people have been waiting for this day, and we’re not just talking about Trainz Simulator’s incredibly devoted contingent of hardcore coal-shovelers. “Hell, it’s about time,” you probably said aloud to yourself as you slipped out of bed this morning. And yeah, it was cheesy and lame, but you don't care, because you're mere seconds, minutes, or hours away from finally playing StarCraft II.

Are you ready, though? Like, really actually ready? It’s been 12 long years since StarCraft first came out, after all. You’re probably so rusty that you’ve officially been declared the world’s first walking tetanus hazard. If only you had some sort of guide – some kind of Internet roadmap that’d put you back on the right track to StarCraft mastery.

Hey, look over there! Just beyond that break. Is that…? It is! Lucky day, huh?

There’s a song that goes “I would do anything for love, but I won’t do that.” For the sake of being on topic, let’s say a videogame character is the modern-day Shakespeare behind those heart-rending, tear-jerking lyrics. As a videogame character, he can do quite a lot. Grapple up mountains, drive cars off said mountains, steal planes and then leap out of them to steal better planes, etc. “Anything,” one might say. However, he still won’t – or really, can’t – do “that.” What is “that,” you ask? Well, anything that actually matters, to be honest.

Sure, when playing games like Grand Theft Auto, Just Cause 2, or Red Faction: Guerrilla, I can mow down crowds of people like they’re an unruly, weed-ridden lawn, but – like actual plants and unlike actual people – they grow back. And if I die, I grow back too. I can cause traffic pile-ups so large they’d fill three nights-worth of evening news programs or send entire buildings crashing to the ground, but when I turn around, everyone’s come back to life and moved on with said lives. The only time I can ever do anything that “matters” is during scripted, generally linear missions. But those run so contrary to the message of “freedom” open-world games proudly trumpet that they may as well be from separate games entirely.

The end result? The game world feels false – less like an actual living, breathing place and more like a theme park where half the rides are out of order. It’s not convincing and – in some cases where story and non-story gameplay clash, ala Grand Theft Auto IV – serves to yank the player right out of the experience.

E3’s been put to bed and tucked in tight, and we’ve given you a pretty good taste of what we saw while we were there. Here’s the thing, though: we only previewed games. Handy, sure, but isn’t there, like, an entire industry surrounding this stuff? So consider this your preview of everything else. Trends, technologies, when we’ll finally catch a glimpse of Half-Life 3 (answer: the day after Duke Nukem Forever comes out), and more!

1. Modern Warfare – I never thought I’d say this, but I sort of miss World War II. Actually, no I don’t, but after realizing that, by now, the number of fictional Middle Eastern countries invented to house fictional videogame terrorist groups probably outnumbers the actual Middle East, I’ve definitely started feeling some fatigue from constantly playing as the boys in fatigues. That, however, didn’t stop E3 from proudly displaying Call of Duty: Black Ops, Spec Ops: The Line, Medal of Honor, and plenty of others cut from the same cloth as Infinity Ward’s opus.

The Forecast: Modern Warfare’s influence has already spread to the most disparate corners of the gaming universe and will continue to do so. Some games won’t even try to dress up their influences (Medal of Honor, I’m looking at you. Oh, wait, is that you Modern Warfare 2? Sorry. Easy Mistake). Others, meanwhile, might try putting a personal spin on the proceedings – like Spec Ops with its choice-based storyline. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Every multiplayer game under the sun – war-based or not – is taking cues from Modern Warfare’s addictive level-up system. Don’t believe me? Try the latest Transformers game. Yeah.

Seeing Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland” on its opening night was a surprisingly illuminating experience for me. For one, I learned that – in my case, at least – introspection and trying to not get trampled by an ocean-like mass of 200 some-odd frothing, cosplaying fans are activities that go hand-in-hand. But as I watched/avoided becoming a doormat for a bunch of Wonderland wannabes, I realized something else: these people didn’t brave the cold (and the dark corners of their parents’ closets) because of their undying love for the timeless tale of Alice and her oddball companions. They did it because Tim Burton’s name was attached to the film. It could have been Tim Burton’s “Barney the Dinosaur” and they’d all have donned purple dinosaur costumes in a heartbeat.

I highly doubt that Infinity Ward’s planned not-Modern Warfare 3 project would’ve been received with such open arms. And evidently, so does Activision.

After all, former Infinity Ward bosses Jason West and Vince Zampella felt so creatively confined as to allegedly defy their contract with Activision and start making eyes EA, so clearly someone wasn’t exactly gung-ho about the Call of Duty creator’s bold new direction. Knowing Infinity Ward, though, regardless of the form the new project took, it probably would’ve been a fantastic game. So what gives? Well, at this point, I can only speculate, but money talks, and it’s telling me that Infinity Ward’s mystery game simply wasn’t a guaranteed mega-hit like Modern Warfare 3’s destined to be. Activision, in case you’d forgotten, likes money quite a lot.

Listening to many gamers and critics prattle on about Mass Effect 2 is kind of like listening to a teenager talk about their first love. The game, they say, can do no wrong. It’s a pure, perhaps even blind sort of love, and at first glance, it’s well-deserved. But no videogame – no matter how much of its dialogue is delivered in Martin Sheen’s seductively raspy warble – is perfect. Problem is, many of Mass Effect 2’s detractors are picking on the wrong “flaw.”

For Mass Effect 2, the word of the day that’s got nitpickers screaming like they’re on an episode of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse is “streamlined.” Or, in many cases, its more derogatory cousin: “dumbed-down.” “Mass Effect 2’s not even an RPG anymore,” many of them hoot and holler. “It’s just a shooter with RPG elements!” Now, ignoring the fact that large chunks of Mass Effect 2 see Shepard holstering his sticks and stones in favor of words so that the player can -- you know -- play a role, streamlining the game’s combat doesn’t diminish its effect. In fact, I’d even argue that it allows for greater strategic depth. Problem is, many gamers still cling to dusty, archaic notions of what certain genres should be, which – in my opinion – is keeping those genres stuck firmly in the Stone Age.

I’m a few loose ends away from wrapping up Mass Effect 2, and that terrifies me.

I know, I know. I shouldn’t be so frightened. I’ve turned the galaxy upside-down, shaking loose its roughest, toughest customers and sweeping them right onto my ship. My crew and I have fought back-to-back time and time again, leaving robots, aliens, and entire mercenary organizations battered and bloody in our wakes. But it’s not my crew I’m worried about. It’s me.

I mean, let’s be honest here: the term “suicide mission” doesn’t inspire much optimism. And here we are, betting the whole space farm on those abysmal odds anyway. But whatever, right? Mass Effect 3’s already been announced. Unless the game’s actually a bouquet of colorful Game Over screens, I’m pretty sure we’ve got this one in the bag. We may as well be running a victory lap at this point.

However, we’ve got one more major factor working against us – one that not even the great, no-longer-late Shepard has taken into account: I, the player, am not reloading a previous save if things go awry.

Part two? Part two? Oh my goodness, you're totally lost, aren't you? Part one's right here, and it ended with this really rad cliffhanger with a car chase and everything. Basically, you have to read it, or part two won't make a lick of sense to you. So get to it. Or try your luck with part two. But you'd have to be, like, some kind of mega-genius to even begin to comprehend the complexities of an ordered list like this one without proper introduction.

Metal Gear Solid 3

“Eh. Metal Gear’s all right, I guess.”

No one has ever said this. You either love the zany stealth franchise and all its fat men on rollerskates, nanotech vampires, and cyborg ninjas -- despite their tendency to speak in cryptic psycho-babble for 45 minutes at a time – or you completely reject it as the human body would an amputated arm that occasionally takes control of your brain and tries to conquer the world. Point is, Metal Gear’s crazy, Japanese, and crazy.

And I love it.

Metal Gear Solid 3, in my opinion, is the height of Snake and co.’s adventures, with creator Hideo Kojima’s eccentricities toned down just enough to create an emotionally captivating tale that’s still unabashedly strange – but not mind-bogglingly so. The game mixed tense “hide in plain sight” stealth sections, battles with everything from masochistic bee men to ancient wheelchair-bound snipers, and a backstab-heavy plot that’d make even James Bond’s head spin to create a balanced concoction of Kojima’s mad science that actually didn’t eventually explode in players’ faces. (The game's bosses, however, did.) After Metal Gear Solid 2’s many missteps, I kept waiting for MGS3 to take a colossal leap off the deep end, but it never did. Instead, it upped the ante at a near-perfect pace, culminating in my favorite boss fight of all time.

The battle with “The End,” as the aforementioned seemingly comatose oldster was known, absolutely blew me away. In a single confrontation, I was forced to make use of nearly every skill Metal Gear Solid had ever taught me. He used a sniper rifle, so naturally, I evaded, gave him the slip, and tip-toed until I was right behind him. Metal Gear Stealth 101, in other words. But then he did something that surprised me: he sprinted like a six-legged cheetah. On his brittle old stick-legs. So much for the wheelchair.

So here we are. The ball’s just about to drop on 2010, and while we’re not controlling games with our brains or Vulcan nerve pinching aliens on the holodeck just yet, it’s been a pretty great decade for games, all told. So I’ve written an arbitrarily numbered list of my favorite games of the past decade, because what else are you going to do to ring in a new decade? Your glamorous parties, oceans of alcohol, and prison cell slumber parties can wait. Read this list now.

Half-Life 2

My memory’s all right, I think. It’s not bad, by any means, but it’s also not great. As a result, looking back on a linear first-person shooter – for me – is kind of like looking back on a really good sandwich. Sure, I enjoyed it – as evidenced by the giant belch I expel shortly afterward, as I do after anything I truly enjoy – but I couldn’t in good conscience tell you about its different parts. It all just sort of runs together. So it’s a pretty big deal when – after only playing a shooter once – I can remember its every twist and turn with near-perfect clarity.

Half-Life 2 is the ultimate roller coaster ride. Each of its locales exudes an unsettling “strange-yet-familiar” vibe that I image would accompany an actual alien occupation of earth. Yet, more than that, when Half-Life 2 switches areas, the game changes. Rarely – with the exception of a few unfortunate vehicle sequences – does it ever force you to do the same thing twice. Other shooters are content to call their samey shooting galleries by other names and hope you won’t notice, but Half-Life 2 never settles into a predictable rhythm, and it’s headcrabs-and-shoulders above the rest because of that.

Also, if you didn’t scream while playing through Ravenholm, you’re lying.

Gotta say, it’s a bit ironic that a blood-soaked week of virtual warfare – during which, more than twelve million casualties met their abrupt, though most assuredly excruciating ends – is the perfect template for videogame immortality. But hey, when happenstance writes my jokes for me, who am I to complain? And so it is with Valve’s Team Fortress 2.

As you’re probably already aware, last week saw Valve launch its latest update for the now two year-old Team Fortress 2. Which, in videogame years, roughly equates to dead. And a half. At the very least, you’d expect the public eye – easily distracted as it is -- to have wandered elsewhere by now, leaving Valve’s wacky shooter to the vultures and tumbleweeds of the world. But it hasn’t. War, as with each of TF2’s other updates, grabbed all kinds of attention – even as newer games like Modern Warfare 2 watched jealously from the outside.

So, why hasn’t interest in Team Fortress 2 faded over the years? Well, I can’t uncover the entire recipe for Valve’s incredibly intricate immortality potion, but I can outline one of its major ingredients: presentation. When Valve gives TF2 a tune-up, it does so with style. While other developers are content to toss their DLC out into the cold, harsh world with little more than a press release to keep it warm, Valve rolls out the proverbial red carpet with comics, videos, week-long Advent Calendar-style reveals, and – most recently – in-game competitions.